It's worth watching the "making of" featurette on the Timelash DVD and re watching the story again. It doesn't improve it at all, but you better appreciation of why the production turned out the way it did..!

10 years after I laid new flooring in my study on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, only half concentrating on the job as I was looking forward to the return of my favourite show (on a regular basis)after a 16 year break?

10 years since someone at the BBC forgot to turn off the audio feed from the live show that preceded it, so that the quiet, suspenseful scenes near the start of "Rose" were interspersed with audience chatter and the dulcet tones of Graham Norton?

10 years since I re-subscribed to DWM after falling off the wagon in 1993 (and missing the creativity of the wilderness years)?

10 years since the stigma of being a Doctor Who fan rapidly began to fade and the kids in my family began to take an interest in the "weird" programme that I used to watch as a kid and still clung on to?

Wow

I'm pretty sure that looking forward to each subsequent series since that Easter weekend in 2005 is one of the reasons that the decade has passed so quickly. Here's to the next 10. and then the next (by which time I can look forward to retirement and filling my days by binge-watching the whole (by then) 72 years of the show.

@The Dreamer... dreaming about series 9@floppy_who I have to say Vincent and The Doctor is an amazing episode on so many counts (if only to get a glimpse of what Bill Nighy might have been like if he had accepted the role of the Doc), but it's TDW that I keep re-watching...!

Also...worthy of note... Is the Easter egg on one of the classic Who DVD which is a part of an intview where Douglas recounts an incident during the production of Destiny of the Daleks where after work one evening he spontaneously went on what ended up as an all weekend drinking spree with Ken Trew that ended up in Paris. The long and the short of it is that they make it back to BBC TV Centre in the nick of time on Monday morning, where someone asks Douglas how his weekend went. His reply was:

"Well, you know those weekends where you wonder how you're going to get back to England....?"

Great Article about a great man. I was on hols in the States when I heard he had died- it was for me one of those rare occasions when I felt a genuine sense of loss on hearing of the passing of someone I hadn't actually met. Here are a couple of my favourite DA quotes:

"I wouldn't trust him as far as I could comfortably spit out a rat" (I still use that one in conversation!)

Zaphod Beeblebrox on trying to describe how slippery some ice covered marble is:

I think you'll find Drax was calling the Doctor "feet", short for "Feet-a Sig-ma", which is how someone with a really fick, erm I mean thick London accent would pronounce "Theta Sigma" which was the Doctor's nickname at the Time Lord academy.

Interesting point about rotating the Monocle anti-clockwise to make it look like a fob-watch.

Still- if the Master can swap genders, so could the Rani....and she was good at conducting scientific experiments without regard for human (or Lakertyan) life. Maybe the Mummy's ancient tech was being sought to extend and extinguished regeneration cycle?

I was brought up on classic Who from the early 70s right up to the end and at the time every story felt great. Compared to modern tv, some of the story telling can feel a little "slow burn" (particularly some of the 6 and 7 parter stories that used to crop up back in the day), however even in the early days there were stories that are definitely filler, by design. "Inside The Spaceship", the 3rd story ever was written at short notice using only the regular cast and the TARDIS set due to not having the next scheduled story ready to film (this was back when episodes were rehearsed and filmed weekly). The resulting story was only 2 episodes long (so about 45 minutes of actual story), but blimey it feels longer. And not in a good way.

I agree with Switcharoo, one or two parts are fine as long as the recipe is right, it's cooked properly and served well.

Having just read the previous article about Jenna Coleman changing her mind about leaving at the read-through stage of last Christmas (which would have been in the latter part of last year) it's highly likely that (contingency) plans for a replacement companion would have been at quite an advanced stage by the time Last Christmas was in pre-production.

Until any of the production team are able to spill the beans in a book (like RTD did) we can only speculate if it was due to be any of the characters in the Xmas special.

@Iris Wildthyme Interestingly, I found 18 to be his weakest on first transmission (Tom was the first Doctor I watched religeously). Having watched all the episodes again on VHS / DVDs in the years since, I still think the Hinchcliffe / Holmes years to be the best for me, however I can appreciate the scripting and sciency parts more in season 18 (thanks mainly to Mr Bidmead) But after 35 years I still find the whole "Question Mark" burgundy uniformity of the Doctor's costume a little way off the original bohemian look given to Tom in his first few series. But hey- it was the start of the 1980s, so was a product of the times.

Still- these minor whinges aside, Tom's era was the best for me at the time (as it was pretty much the one I grew up with!)

I have to side with you on the definition of "whovian". Back in the day (early 80s, as I recall) whovian was a term used solely in the US. here in the UK, we were just Doctor Who fans (although most people at my school had other descriptions for us, but I'm too polite to repeat them here. It was tough for us fans pre-2005!)

@AlessandroArsuffi@StephenAHayes RTD's rewrite may have something to do with the companion for series 4 originally meant to be someone else (I forget the character's name...possibly Penny? it's been a while since I read The Writer's Tale). He got to the stage where he even had an actor in mind to play the role when Catherine Tate agreed to come back for a whole season and the rewrites began....

Apparently the name was deliberate too as it indicated some form of conferred academic rank (which by that thinking means there could have been renegade Time Lords called The Batchelor and The Professor. Maybe Ace knew more than she was letting on...!)

@divya12 I've found that one of the best ways of keeping my sanity on here is turning off the email notifications that tell me I have a response to one of my comments. I did this as a couple of years ago I dared to express an opinion on something that someone took exception to and laid into me big time (unreasonably so in my mind). As someone with high blood pressure, anxiety disorders and borderline depression, this wasn't good for my health- particularly as the fandom during the 1970s and 80s that I had grown up with seemed to me to be far more welcoming and and had a greater sense of cameraderie (guess what- no internet!).

So now I just comment, try to be nice (or at least be inconsequential) and just move on without looking back.

@blakeavon I like your thinking! It doesn't occur to me to rank everything in life. I'm rapidly discovering that life is too short to stress over quantifying how good something is compared to something else and that there are better things to to spend what little free time I have (like watching more episodes of Doctor Who...).

And do I detect a creeping reference to another BBC sci-fi show in your user name..?

@ElyotWren I'm not sure how we kept up with and remembered the plots back in the 60s, 70s and 80s either- we just did.

Maybe our brains were able to process information more slowly over a longer period of time back then as they weren't subject to constant information overload all the time like they are now?

(At this point I'd reference the Art of Noise song "Something is Missing", but not sure it would be a widely enough recognised reference..!)

I think someone has recently done research that proves that due to the amount of on-demand information available to us all currently, the brain is losing its ability to retain facts but becoming better at knowing how to find information.?

@Doctavarium: Knight of CYDONIA Deadly Assassin wasn't so bad- I watched it as a 5 year old and the only thing that gave me the heebie jeebies was the physical appearance of the Master. The fact the Doctor was being graphically drowned at the end of one of the episodes didn't bother me as knew deep down that he would be ok the following week...

Nice one Gustaff! I'm also more of a fan of the Sixth Doctor's coat after I persuaded Colin to let me try it on at a small convention in 2001... I have utmost respect for Colin filming under the hot studio lights as it is incredibly heavy..!

Have you listened to any of the Big Finish audios with Mel Bush? They have altered my opinion of her as a character almost completely (if only for portraying Mel as the person that told the Seventh Doctor to stop mis-quoting proverbs as they were annoying... Explaining why he mysteriously stopped doing it during his first season).

At a recent convention I was lucky enough to be able to sit down for a chat with Louise Jameson for an hour with a small group of people. The discussion was varied and one of the group asked Louise what she thought Leela would be doing on Gallifrey more than 35 years after leaving the Doctor. She paused thoughtfully and then went on to say that Leela would almost certainly got rid of Andred somehow (making some reference to him not being Leela's type) and that by now she would be some wise tribal matriarch with dozens of children and grandchildren. I quite like that idea of settling down and having a quiet life ( although the events of the Time War and the Big Finish Gallifrey Series might be something of an issue there...!)

Hi, you could try his turn as Bayban the Butcher in Blake's 7 (City on the Edge of the World, series 3) or see if you can find any footage of him playing Paul Merroney in the 70s drama The Brothers (alongside Kate O'Mara)